Information Technology Reference
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4.11 Future of online Participation in italy
Having discussed the issue of the costs of web democracy and the problem of citi-
zens' expectations, the last dilemma to be addressed relates to the future devel-
opments of e-democracy in Italy. The findings of this chapter seem to indicate
that Italian public administrations have a common perception of the basics of
online democratic participation. They also share similar problems in dealing with
e-democracy (namely, the problem of costs and that of citizens' expectations). As a
further, and major, consequence, the experiments on online participation that have
been discussed in this chapter may have good chances of being replicated in very
different contexts across the country. This could possibly lead to a common model
for online participatory rights. On the one hand, this model draws from the incor-
poration of shared core fundamental principles into domestic procedural rules/
practices of administrative law. Despite its relative adolescence, web-based experi-
ments in participatory democracy have a robust collection of projects in general and
can count on a relatively high level of cooperation and coordination among and
between the different levels of government. Although at the local level, there are no
explicitly defined government bodies that are directly responsible for e-government
or e-democracy actions, the fact that, at the central level, all electronic initiatives
are still monitored by a single, central, administrative body, the National Centre
for Public Administration and Informatics, can be considered as progress. The role
of the National Centre for Public Administration and Informatics is to stimulate,
support, and promote ICT usage within national public bodies.
On the other hand, it seems that the success of this process toward unifor-
mity increasingly depends on some sort of higher-level supervision—either from
the European Union or from international bodies. Not casually, in the Italian case,
the government has replicated the European model, which has been adopted also
by a number of international bodies. In 2012, the Italian Council of Ministers
introduced the “Community Initiative,” enabling citizens to take part in the leg-
islative activities of the European Parliament through the European Commission.
This instrument has been issued in response to the member countries' wish to con-
solidate the principles governing democracy, by bringing the citizens closer to the
institutions and making them “frontline activists” in initiatives and lawmaking.
Author Biography
Gianluca Sgueo is a postdoctoral researcher in Democracy and Innovation at the
Center for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra (Portugal). He currently
holds the positions of adjunct professor in European Law at the University of Viterbo
(Italy) and lecturer in Lobbying & Democracy at the Bocconi University (Italy). He
graduated with degrees in law (University of Rome, La Sapienza, 2004) and politi-
cal sciences (University of Viterbo, 2006). He holds an MA in Administrative &
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